Buenos Aires-based producer Ignacio Rey is priming Argentina’s first ever VFX-laden live action fantasy pic “Yanka y el espiritu del Volcan,” a $2.5 million kid-targeted drama based on a Mapuche legend. The coming-of-age pic tracks a young girl called Yanka who in her quest to find her lost mother, comes upon some some otherworldly creatures and a volcano where she discovers that she is among the few who can tame the angry spirit lurking in it.

The feature directorial debut of ad maven Ivan Abello has been in post for some 18 months given its 300 VFX shots rendered by Fernando Sirianni’s Nomad VFX, a co-producer, and is expected to be completed by March for a July 2017 debut.

“We’ve getting a lot of interest from both local and international distributors, but we’re not showing it until January or February,” said Rey, who has been producing a gamut of pics in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia and Spain under his Sudestada Cine label with partner Gaston Rothschild. The shingle’s co-producing credits include Chile’s “Neruda,” and Colombia’s “Alias Maria,” both representing their countries at the Oscars next year. “It’s sometimes easier to choose international projects because as a member of FIPCA, I go to scores of festivals and meet producers whose work I know and admire,” he said. “It’s been a dream to work with Fabula’s Juan de Dios Larrain [on “Neruda”].”

Now 42, he’s been producing pics since the age of 26. He credits his early start to the changes in Argentina’s film law in 1994, which boosted the film fund, and the advent of digital cameras in 1996 that heralded the rise of the Argentine New Wave Cinema. He’s had to scale back on his teaching duties in Argentina and Cuba due to Sudestada’s seven-to-eight projects in varying phases of production, but the advice he always gives his students is the same: “You may be brilliant but to be a good producer, it’s more important to be persistent.”